


late night comedy show

by bazanite



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Codependency, F/M, Gen, drift!drug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 17:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazanite/pseuds/bazanite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe it's actually a drug. Mako stares at the helmet in her lap. Maybe the loneliness is the withdrawal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	late night comedy show

  
          Afterwards, Mako expects everything to go back to normal. Not like she knows what normal is. Her entire life has been consumed with the kaiju; she's never known anything but abject terror. She moves out of the base, gets a cat, stays up late reading books that she never had time for before.  
          Everyone's forgotten about them. It's been three months and nobody knows her name anymore. She doesn't mind the anonymity. In fact, she likes it. She grows her hair out, takes out the blue, stops wearing contacts. Mako Mori blends in.  
          It's really fucking boring.  
          She calls up Raleigh at nearly 3 AM, still in bed, wide awake. Her new apartment is on a top floor in a sky-rise, and she can practically see the edges of Hong Kong at night. The entire room is filled with the soft glow of its electric heartbeat.  
          "Is this what it was like before?" she asks him, staring at the ceiling. She hasn't slept well in weeks.  
          "I don't really remember," he admits. "The rubble's new."  
          "What? No." She rolls her eyes. "I mean... the... the quiet."  
          Raleigh doesn't say anything for a minute. "Are you _bored_ , Mako?"  
          She is, but that's not what's bothering her. She decides not answering is the best answer at all.  
          "I've gotta admit," he says in response to her silence. "I've found myself at a loss. I've got no freakin' clue what to do with myself. What do you do once you save the world? Go to Disney World?"  
          "What's that?" she asks, and he explains, slowly. It sounds nice. She smiles faintly.  
          Eventually he runs out of things to say, and she falls asleep to the sound of his breathing.

  
          She wakes up in the morning with the blankets on the floor. She puts on her shoes, and goes for a five-mile run. When she's done she finds a noodle place, orders breakfast, and reads a paper. Absolutely nothing important happens, the headline might as well read. Universe boring as crap again. Frustrated, she folds the paper up, leaves it on the table for the next guest, and eats in silence.  
          Once she finishes eating, she walks back to her apartment, puts the keys in the dish by the door, feeds Jiuchu, and turns on the news. Some small part of her half-wants to see a kaiju crashing through Stonecutters Bridge. Instead, she watches a story about a woman in Tai Po who has created the world's largest mushroom museum.  
          Mako wants to scream, but nothing comes out of her.  
          "Sorry to wake you," she tells Raleigh when she calls him again that night.  
          "It's 10 AM here. Don't worry about it."  
          "I feel like something's missing," she explains quietly, like it's wrong of her to think that. She feels like she's confessing her sins.  
          "You mean besides everything we know?"  
          "I suppose." She pulls the covers over her head and the phone. She can still see the lights of Hong Kong through the thin fabric. He's quiet for a while.  
          "It's the drift," Raleigh's rough accent relaxes her. "You spend enough time in somebody else's head and you forget what it's like to be alone inside your own."  
          Mako thinks about the Kadonovskys and the Weis and for the first time she's glad they died with the people they loved. "Is it supposed to feel this bad?"  
          "What's that mean?" he scoffs. "Supposed to."  
          She smiles, but feels like crying all the same. 

  
          She wakes up in the armchair by the window, tries to rub the crick out of her neck, runs eight miles, eats her breakfast, doesn't read the newspaper, and wanders around the city, watching construction crews attempt to sort out the remaining mess.  
          Eventually she comes to a small, empty park, and screams at the top of her lungs for as long as her breath will hold.  
          Mako trudges home and sits at the small table in her kitchen. She stares at the tile on the tabletop. When the phone rings she trips over herself to get it and smacks her head on the kitchen counter.  
          "Are you okay?" Raleigh asks after she squeezes out a pained hello.  
          "Fine. How are you?"  
          "Good."  
          They don't say anything.  
          "Did you need something?" Mako asks.  
          "I guess not."  
          "Oh," she says quietly.  
          Silence.  
          "Did you?"  
          "Need something?"  
          "Yeah."  
          Mako tries her hardest to figure something out. "I wouldn't mind having a kaiju to kill, if you'd be so kind to arrange that."  
          Raleigh laughs, long and low. Something warm spreads through Mako.  
          "Why did you go back to Alaska?" She's asked him a hundred times. Each time his answer never sounds quite genuine.  
          "Hong Kong ain't exctly my cup of tea, darlin'." 

  
          She wakes up on the couch. Her entire body aches. She runs ten miles, but when she gets to the park she's too empty to scream. She buys two pork buns from a street vendor and sits on a bench, watching people bustle past.  
          Time seems to speed up and stop all at the same time. When the sky gets red it feels like she's only been there for an hour or so, and when the streetlights start blooming around her, she wearily trudges home. This time she tries to avoid calling Raleigh until it's almost 3 AM. But the ceiling of her bedroom isn't providing much conversation, and everyone else she knows is dead or leagues away. The thought, for some reason, strikes her as incredibly funny, and she laughs to herself.  
          She answers the phone on the first ring.  
          "Come visit," he demands before she says hello. "I'll show you around."  
          "Okay," she says without a second thought. 

  
          "I didn't know you wore glasses," Raleigh says when she gets off the plane. Mako scowls, then laughs until she aches. Raleigh wraps his arms around her and she feels a bubbling mania slip out of her. She puts her forehead on his shoulder and sighs deeply. He still smells like the greasy inside of Gipsy Danger. The small ten year-old part of her expects to cry, but instead she feels such a satisfying a sense of contentment.  
          He slings her duffle bag over her shoulder and puts her into a rusty pickup named Charlene.  
          Raleigh lives in a cabin about ten minutes outside of Anchorage. He points out his favorite bar as they drive through the city, the way to the harbor, the stadium.  
          There's not a lot to see in Anchorage, and Mako loves it. The constant stimulation of Hong Kong has worn her down.  
          "Want to climb a mountain tomorrow?" Raleigh asks her as they cut open salmon for dinner.  
          "I've never climbed a mountain before," Mako says slowly. "Is it enjoyable?"  
          Raleigh thinks about it. "About as enjoyable as being trapped underwater."  
          Mako grins. "That sounds nice."

  
          Bombs are slowly trickling out of the middle east again. North Korea refuses to submit to U.N. sanctions. The great Russian bear starts stirring.  
          "The day I got back some admiral showed up at my front door and offered me an elite position in the Navy Seals," Raleigh tells her after turning off the television.  
          Mako laughs, surprised and skeptical. "Can you imagine sneaking into an enemy camp through a swamp, breathing through a reed?"  
          He rolls his eyes. "That's what I told him. It's way too convert. I like flashy. Lots of explosions and broken stuff." He looks over at her and gives her a tilted, way-too-Raleigh grin.  
          In that moment, she falls in love with him.  
          She's been attracted to him before--Raleigh is far from plain, and she spent her fair share of time appreciating the way he peels the Ranger suit on and off--and she's certainly loved him. In the drift, you can't not love your co-pilot.  
          But now she looks at him and realizes with absolute certainty that she'll never be able to survive without him. It's not the war that she misses, it's not the satisfying feeling of bringing down a kaiju, it's just Raleigh. Faintly she wonders if it's destiny or just the drift that brought them together. If it's mysticism or science.  
          Frankly, she doesn't care. 

  
          Mako blinks and weeks have passed in Anchorage. By now she might as well call the neighbors and let them keep the cat. She doesn't ever want to go back to Hong Kong. By the time summer is over they've settled into a comfortable routine. They've both received unspeakable sums of money for their services, and while Mako is content to focus on self-improvement, running through tai chi forms in the field behind the house until she's mastered even the most miniscule movement, Raleigh spends a few hours every day working the neighbors' grain elevators, or farms, or fishing boats.  
          When bits of Cherno Alpha start washing up on the beaches in Anchorage, Mako pretends like it's not happening. When the practically-pristine Pons system turns up in the knick-knack shop that Mako occasionally visits, she nearly screams. Instead, she picks up the electric box, turns it over in her hands, and presses it to her chest lovingly. The clerk has no idea what it is, other than some soviet-stamped memorabilia. Mako pays seventy five dollars for the entire system. She brings it home, sits down with it, and waits for Raleigh to come back.  
           _You spend enough time in someone else's head, you forget what it's like to be alone in your own._ Maybe this is some new side effect of the drift that scientists didn't discover in time. Maybe it's actually a drug. Mako stares at the helmet in her lap. Maybe the loneliness is the withdrawal.  
          She leaves it on the kitchen table. 

  
          He takes a long look at the Pons when he comes home. "No."  
          He kisses her for the first time then, desperately.  
          They both want it to be enough. It isn't. 

  
          She wakes in the middle of the night and he isn't there. Mako finds him sitting at the table in the dark. The blue light from the coffee maker reflects off of a helmet. She sits next to him, reaches across the table, and squeezes his hand.  
          "What the hell," Raleigh says. He sounds wrecked; Mako hurts to hear it. "Who would have thought the aftermath would be the worst part."  
          They set it up in the dark. Raleigh drags a generator in from the shed, Mako uses her deft fingers to wrap frayed wire and mend kaiju-ravaged circuits. Cherno Alpha's system isn't like Gipsy's--it's not as smooth.  
          Bridging the drift is like plunging into the arctic.  
          They hold their breath and stare at each other. Then Raleigh grins, painfully wide. Mako raises her left arm, and together they bring the full weight of Gipsy Danger's memory down into Scunner.  
          Together, intertwined, they shout with joy. 

  
          They do it again the next day, and the next, until all they do anymore is exist in the drift. Sometimes they'll disengage to eat breakfast, but that happens so rarely that Mako usually can't remember what the last thing she ate was. They explore themselves in ways other people would find impossible, reliving memories together, pushing the limitations of the system until they break it and everything starts running together. For a while, it's serene. They exist in Mako's memory, watching Stacker make scrambled eggs for breakfast. Mako can't tell which one of them loves her father more.  
          Stacker drops a glass and in a second Mako's heart rate spikes. In the real memory, it's nothing. In the drift, it's like a wave crashes down on them.  
           Something awful happens then. They're sucked out of Mako's memory and into Raleigh's. Instantly they realize their mistake. The terror in Mako's memory triggers his. They explode out of snowy Japan and sink into Gipsy Danger, but she's old. Original.  
          Alaska.  
          Instead of inhabiting her own flesh in the memory, Mako inhabits Yancy. All three of them are suddenly in the drift. Raleigh's still connected to his brother down here, and somehow that means Mako's connected to both of them. All three of them experience Yancy's fear. All three of them experience Raleigh's despair. All three of them experience Mako's horror.  
           _Raleigh,_ they think desperately as Knifehead tears the two of them out of the jaeger.  
          She doesn't know how she gets out of Yancy after she dies. Everything after her death is lost in the drift. In the same body, they reach up, disengage the Pons, and are two people once again. Mako stares at him across the room.  
          He can't meet her eyes. Mako dimly becomes aware that she's shaking. She stumbles to her feet, crosses the wide area rug, and tucks herself into the arm chair around him.  
          He clings to her so tightly that Mako can almost forget they're separate.  
          They don’t touch the system for a week. Mako goes back to doing movements in the yard and Raleigh comes home exhausted.  
          But in the end, the drift sings to Mako like a siren. Surely Raleigh hears it too. She catches him glancing at it in the corner from time to time over silent dinners and feels him thinking about it during desperate love-making.  
          Neither can stay away from it.

  
          Eventually they stop turning it off. The world around them deteriorates. They stay in the drift long enough that they lose all sense of time. Their identities slowly dissolve. In the drift, she can feel Raleigh, reluctant to escape his body, trying to unravel it. She's long since let go of herself. He's trying to figure out where he ends and she begins, tracing the spaces between them.  
          Mako puts her hands over his and she can't tell if it's in the drift or in reality. It doesn't matter anymore.  
          "Perhaps I'm just a memory you've forgotten."  
          Mako feels him strain to remember his life before the kaiju, but it's like trying to catch the tide. They've been together forever. They're nearly the same person now. The memory of his brother hangs around them like a ghost, but Mako finds comfort in it. Together the three of them are strong. Eventually his frantic searching stops.  
          "I don't know how I'd ever forget you," Raleigh says and touches his forehead to hers in the drift.


End file.
